BY ELIZABETH STEELMAN
SPECIAL TO THE SACRAMENTO BEE
AUGUST 31, 2018 12:00 PM
While many politicians have committed to raising wages or combating wage theft and other workplace abuses, on this Labor Day we are living through a time in American jurisprudence that appears hell-bent on degrading the tools that workers rely on to enforce these commitments.
I am not just talking about the Janus ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, which will weaken public-sector labor unions by forcing them to serve non-members for free.
Another controversial recent decision was the Epic Systems case, which effectively bars non-unionized workers from collective action and forces them to settle disputes through a mandatory arbitration process that’s controlled by the boss.
The Supreme Court deepened the power imbalance that exists between employer and employee, as if threats of retaliation don’t already prevent many workers from enforcing their rights.
In California, one in five construction workers is a victim of some form of wage theft. Generally, this means they were paid off the books, less than promised or not at all. This is about more than workers. Wage theft costs California taxpayers $8.5 billion every year and puts honest businesses at a competitive disadvantage.
Absent a union contract (which only cover about 20 percent of construction workers), a cheated worker’s best hope is some type of collective action or robust government enforcement. The Epic Systems ruling basically took the first option off the table.
To combat abuses such as wage theft, labor laws must be enforced. But only a fraction of victimized workers ever file claims and most wage theft judgments are never collected. The often lengthy and complicated process leads many workers to simply give up fighting a system they see as rigged.
States and municipalities can either accept this reality, or commit themselves to reclaiming the enforcement tools that courts have taken away from workers.